Because, of course, those provocative words echoed her secret desires. She’d love to be all his.

No, that wasn’t quite right. She’d much prefer for him to be all hers. Her own private toy boy, to be played with till these cravings he evoked in her were satisfied.

But that was a pipedream. Total fantasy world stuff. The real world didn’t allow women that kind of privilege. Women always paid for their sexual pleasure, with emotional involvement and the most soul-destroying pain.

It was only the men in this world who could take what they wanted, then walk away without turning a hair. Natalie didn’t doubt that Brandon hadn’t lost any sleep over her. He’d have just gone back to his wife, then eventually found another gullible female to sleep with on the side.

‘The trouble with you,’ Brandon had said to her scathingly when she’d told him to leave, ‘is that you take life too seriously.’

Remembering those words reminded Natalie that she wasn’t capable of playing sexual games. For her, lust and love inevitably became entwined. Whenever she went to bed with a man, she ended up falling in love with him. Brandon had not been her first disaster. Just her last.

Definitely her last, she reaffirmed.

‘Before your testosterone gets any ideas,’ she added in what she hoped was a suitably droll tone, ‘that was just an expression.’

‘I think my testosterone is quite safe around you, Natalie.’

Oh, that hurt. That really hurt.

‘I’m very relieved to hear that, Mike. But perhaps you should be careful when choosing my new wardrobe. Men are renowned for being notoriously shallow when it comes to sex. In the olden days it only took a flash of an ankle and they were frothing at the mouth.’

He laughed. ‘I’d need a lot more than a flash of your ankle, sweetheart. Not that I’m a frothing-at-the-mouth kind of guy. I’ve had women stand in front of me stark naked and it hasn’t got me going.’

‘Poor Mike. You have a problem in that area?’

He laughed again. ‘I sure do at the moment. But I aim to fix it later tonight.’

Natalie thought as much. He was going out on the town to pick up some little dolly-bird.

‘Hope you use protection.’

‘Honey, I always use protection.’

‘Do you realise that you’ve called me both sweetheart and honey in the last thirty seconds?’ she threw at him. ‘I thought we had an understanding about that.’

‘That’s the trouble with you, Natalie. You think too much. You’d be far better off putting on some glad rags, going out and getting yourself laid.’

‘Like you, you mean?’

‘I have no intention of going out anywhere tonight.’

‘But I thought…’

‘See what I mean? You think too much. Incorrectly as usual.’

‘You are an extremely irritating man.’

‘And you are an extremely irritating woman.’